The Cloverfield Paradox (Film Review)

2018 Paramount Pictures/Bad Robot Productions
Directed by: Julius Onah
Screenplay by: Oren Uziel
Starring: Daniel Brühl, Elizabeth Debicki, Aksel Hennie, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Chris O'Dowd, John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, and Zhang Ziyi

It didn't take long for the vultures to come out. The Cloverfield Paradox was announced during Super Bowl LII, and premiered on Netflix moments later. Instant gratification for viewers, though in this case, the only gratification seemed to be slagging the film.
It's been in-fashion to pile on J.J. Abrams for a while now, to insult his "mystery-box" storytelling style, even as he's had a larger hand in guiding the last decade of pop culture than nearly anyone. Abrams produced and repurposed The Cloverfield Paradox from a script originally titled God Particle, in order to fit it into his larger Cloverfield series. Cloverfield is an anthology of films in different genres based around the same mysterious alien/monster invasion. The Cloverfield Paradox received immediate knee-jerk reviews, which jumped all over the film for many conflicting reasons (check out how many "despite excellent casting" comments ram head-to-head with "due to awful casting" ones), though if most were honest, they would say, "This movie got hyped in a way I don't like on principle as a part of a series I don't like on principle."
Yes, the Cloverfield series has largely thrived, and by "largely," I mean, "the films have recouped their budgets," on the basis of wildly original and mysterious marketing, but that shouldn't be used as a slight against the films themselves. The original Cloverfield is a fun creature-feature, and its follow-up, 10 Cloverfield Lane, is an excellent thriller. The Cloverfield Paradox is a hokey B movie sci-fi film that's mostly enjoyable for what it is. Sure, the budget for this tale of a space-station crew transported to an alternate universe is clearly quite low, the characters are largely anonymous cannon-fodder, and the film is clumsily linked to the larger Cloverfield series by a goofy, barely-there side plot, as well as a tossed in final shot. Admittedly, 10 Cloverfield Lane this is not.
However, The Cloverfield Paradox espouses its B movie charms well: worms burst out of a guy's body, an arm gets chopped off and becomes sentient, and characters face pulp sci-fi moral quandaries like "should I stay in this parallel universe where my kids are still alive, instead of saving my home universe where my kids are dead?" The actors are game, particularly Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who outperforms the leads from the two most recent Alien films. Battlestar Galactica's composing maestro, Bear McCreary, again suggests that maybe he should be the go-to for space movie soundtracks. A guy's arm gets ripped off and becomes sentient.
"Largely undeveloped crew gets picked off one by one" is one of the oldest sci-fi tropes there is, but it's stuck around because it works, and with the dearth of sci-fi films in recent decades, it's still welcome. No, watching The Cloverfield Paradox likely won't change anyone's life, and most of it won't be remembered a month after it's watched. This latest Cloverfield chapter likely won't pull any new fans into the Cloverfield series, but I can think of far worse ways to spend 102 minutes.

Nicsperiment Rating: 6/10